“Seven Brothers” song: Learn ordinal numbers and professions

In this post we will look at a children’s song خالي عنده سبع أولاد (pronounced khaalii ʕind-uh sabʕ ’awlaad in Standard Arabic) ‘My Uncle Has Seven Sons’, sung to the tune of ‘Skip To My Lou’. This song will help you learn the first seven ordinal numbers (i.e., ‘first’, ‘second’, … ‘seventh’), as well as some professions (tailor, baker, driver, etc.). Want to give it a listen?

The song is sung in Levantine (specifically Jordanian) dialect, but don’t let that scare you off. You only need to learn a couple words that are completely different in Standard Arabic, and the pronunciation of some of the other words is just slightly different.

The song has seven verses: one verse for each son. All verses follow the same pattern, and differ only in two words (which son and what profession). So, let’s start off by looking a one complete verse. The pronunciation is given approximately how it is sung rather than in Standard Arabic:

خالي عنده سبع أولاد.

khaali ʕand-uh sabʕ awlaad.

‘My uncle has seven sons.’

بتعرفوا شو بيشتغلوا؟

bi-tiʕrafu shu bishtighilu?

‘Do you (pl.) know what they do?’

الأول منهم كان نجار.

’il-’awwal min-hum kaan najjaar.

‘The first one (lit. the first of them) was a carpenter.’

يقدر يعمل دايمًا…

yi’dar yiʕmil dayman…

‘He can always do… (followed by the sound he makes while working)’

After this first verse, we learn that the second son is a blacksmith, that the third son is a tailor, and so forth.

أولاد’awlaad literally means ‘boys’ (plural of ولدwalad ‘boy’), but in colloquial Arabic it is often used to simply mean ‘children’. Here it means ‘sons’.

The modern dialects don’t make gender distinctions for the numbers 1 through 10 in the way Standard Arabic does. In correct Standard Arabic you’d need to use a different form of the number here: سبعة أولادsabʕat ’awlaad ‘seven boys’.

The bi that appears on both verbs is a present tense marker. It has no equivalent in Standard Arabic.

shu is the Levantine word for ‘what’. In Standard Arabic, the most usual word for ‘to work’ is يعملyaʕmal, but some dialects that word just means ‘to do’ or ‘to make’, so for ‘to work’ they use a form of another word meaning ‘to work’, which in Standard Arabic is يشتغلyashtaghil.

In Standard Arabic you’d need to put the complement of كانkaan(a) ‘was’ in the accusative (نجّارًاnajjaaran), but none of the modern dialects have any case distinctions.

The word يقدرyi’dar ‘to be able’ isn’t actually what I hear here, but this is what I can find when I search for the lyrics. What I hear is something like hi kaan, which doesn’t make sense to me. (Note that Levantine is not my own dialect.) If you can ask a Levantine-speaker about this, put it in a comment and I’ll update this article (and be eternally grateful to you).

دايمًاdayman is the colloquial pronunciation of يائمًاdaa’iman ‘always’.

To follow the rest of the song, you will need to know the first seven ordinal numbers. These are essentially the same in Standard Arabic and Levantine, so I will just list them in the Standard Arabic:

سابع

سادس

خامس

رابع

ثالث

ثاني

أوّل

saabiʕ

saadis

khaamis

raabiʕ

thaalith

thaanii

’awwal

‘seventh’

‘sixth’

‘fifth’

‘fourth’

‘third’

‘second’

‘first’

The only difference that needs to be mentioned here is that in Levantine (as in most modern dialects), the letter ث is pronounced like a ت, so the words for ‘second’ and ‘third’ are pronounced taani and taalit.

Now we just need to know the seven professions (although you might not agree that the seventh one really counts as a profession), again as pronounced in Standard Arabic:

كسلان

بنّاء

خبّاز

سوّاق

خيّاط

حدّاد

نجّار

kaslaan

bannaa’

khabbaaz

sawwaaq

khayyaaṭ

ḥaddaad

najjaar

‘lazy’

‘builder’

‘baker’

‘driver’

‘tailor’

‘blacksmith’

‘carpenter’

A few comments are in order:

In Levantine and some other dialects, the letter ق is pronounced as a glottal stop (that is, the same as a ءhamza). So, سوْاق ‘driver’ is pronounced sawwaa‘.

In dialect, the word بنّاء ‘driver’ is pronounced without the final hamza: banna.

Two of these professions are related to nouns you may know. خبّازkhabbaaz ‘baker’ is related to خبزkhubz ‘bread’. حدّادḥaddaad ‘blacksmith’ is related to حديدḥadiid ‘steel’.

Can you follow the whole song now? To make it easier, here is the whole text, minus the repetitions: